Agriculture in Kotah.
Each plough or team is equal to the culture of one hundred bighas; consequently 4000 ploughs will cultivate 400,000 during each harvest, and for both 800,000, nearly 300,000 English acres. The soil is deemed poor which does not yield seven to ten maunds[[4]] of wheat per bigha, and five to seven of millet and Indian corn. But to take a very low estimate, and allowing for bad seasons, we may assume four maunds per bigha as the average produce (though double would not be deemed an exaggerated average): this will give 3,200,000 maunds of both products, wheat and millet, and the proportion of the former to the latter is as three to two. Let us estimate the value of this. In seasons of abundance, twelve rupees per mauni,[[5]] in equal quantities of both grains, is the average; at this time (July 1820), notwithstanding the preceding season has been a failure throughout Rajwara (though there was a prospect of an excellent one), and grain a dead weight, eighteen rupees per mauni is the current price, and may be quoted as the average standard of Haraoti: above is approximating to dearness, and below to the reverse. But if we take the average of the year of actual plenty, or twelve rupees[[6]] per mauni of equal quantities of wheat and juar, or one rupee per maund, the result is thirty-two lakhs of rupees annual income.
Let us endeavour to calculate how much of this becomes net produce towards the expenses of the government, and it will be seen that the charges are about one-third gross amount [542].
Expenses.
| Establishments—namely, feeding cattle and servants, tear and wear of gear, and clearing the fields—one-eighth of the gross amount,[[7]] or | 400,000 |
| Seed | 600,000 |
| Replacing 4000 oxen annually, at 20s.[[8]] | 80,000 |
| Extras | 20,000 |
| 1,100,000 |
We do not presume to give this, or even the gross amount, as more than an approximation to the truth; but the regent himself has mentioned that in one year the casualties in oxen amounted to five thousand! We have allowed one-fourth, for an ox will work well seven years, if taken care of. Thus, on the lowest scale, supposing the necessities of the government required the grain to be sold in the year it was raised, twenty lakhs will be the net profit of the regent’s farms. But he has abundant resources without being forced into the market before the favourable moment; until when, the produce is hoarded up in subterranean granaries. Everything in these regions is simple, yet efficient: we will describe the grain-pits.
Storage of Grain.
Reputable merchants of the Mahajan tribe refrain from speculating in grain, from the most liberal feelings, esteeming it dharm nahin hai, ‘a want of charity.’ The humane Jain merchant says, “to hoard up grain, for the purpose of taking advantage of human misery, may bring riches, but never profit.”
According to the only accessible documents, the whole crown-revenue of Kotah from the tax in kind, amounted, under bad management, to twenty-five lakhs of rupees. This is all the regent admits he collects from (to use his own phrase) his handful (pachiwara) of soil: of course he does not include his own farming system, but only the amount raised from the cultivator. He confesses that two-thirds of the superficial area of Kotah were waste; but that this is now reversed, there being two-thirds cultivated, and only one-third waste, and this comprises mountain, forest, common, etc.